Over 100 words

E. turned 16 months on Monday and I am not exaggerating if I say she can use much more than 100 words in each language (Hungarian and English).

The calculation was done by D. He added up all the functional language (thanking, asking, giving, objecting, greetings etc.) and words of different topics we've been dealing with (see the collection bellow) and the sum must be over 100 words, getting closer to 200.

Now I'm collecting the ones that E. uses confidently in the right context (and not just parroting them or not the ones she understands because in this case there are a thousand words, I guess). Of course, these words and expressions are not 100 % clear. (She tends to pronounce the "k"  sound  "p", the "g" sound "b" or the vowels sometimes melt into one another). Still, it's her great achievement.

Now I'm trying to focus on her English only:

 



Peek-a-boo

Functional language:

• Thank you
• Please
• Pick it up
• Here you are
• There (if she wants to go somewhere)
• Let's go
• Come on
• Bye-bye
• Hi/Hello
• Don't like it
• Like it
• Cheers (when drinking)
• Up
• Out (of the playpen or high chair)
• not comfy (on the potty)
• Oops (when something is fallen)
• Oh, no! (when something goes wrong)
• Peek-a-boo (when she hides behind the curtain)

Family members:

• mommy
• daddy
• granny
• papa (for grandpa)
• baby
• + names of our family members (7 people), our native nanny (A.) and my best friend (B.) 

Animals: (if she doesn't know the name of the animal she says the sounds they make)

• doggie

  

  Our poor mixed-breed

• froggie
• cat/kitty
• cow
• sheep
• kangaroo
• hippo
• bear
• mouse
• rat
• panda
• butterfly
• ladybird
• bee
• pig
• duck
• ant
• turtle
• whale
• dino

Fruit:

Window pictures

• apple
• pear
• grapes (a bunch of grapes)
• banana
• kiwi
• orange
• plum
• lemon
• cherries
• strawberries
• apricot
• peach
• tomato
• berry

Vegetable:

• aubergine
• onion
• potato
• broccoli
• mushroom
• pumpkin

Other foods:

water

• cheese
• bread
• salami
• sausage
• honey
• water
• milk
• mayonnaise
• ketchup
• butter
• yogurt
• coffee
• ice creme
• ricecake

Flowers:

• peony
• lilac
• begonia
• pansy
• daisy

Flag of Portugal - E.'s favourite right now

Countries/Flags/:

• Norway
• Belgium
• Portugal
• Hungary
• the European Union
• Turkey
• Italy

Colours: (the clearest utterances)

• red
• orange
• yellow
• green
• blue
• purple
• pink
• black
• white
• grey



Bubbles

• brown

Shapes:

• oval
• triangle
• heart
• star
• pentagon
• rectangle

Everyday object/Toys:

• spoon
• plate
• knife
• fork
• bottle
• kitchen
• teddy
• book
• playground
• sandpit
• bath
• colour pencil

  

  drawing star

• crayon
• paper
• drawing
• nappy
• creme
• toothbrush
• man (a plastic figurine)
• clock
• high chair
• door
• playpen

  

  Sandpit

• video
• dummy
• potty
• poopy
• pee pee
• peg
• mill
• car
• choo-choo train
• ball
• puddle
• big
• bubbles
• bin
• balloon
• sun
• cloud

Hat and jeans

Clothes:

• jacket
• slippers
• hat
• trousers
• jeans
• shoes
• cardigan
• boots
• pyjamas
• socks

Body parts:

• head
• pinkie
• nose
• ear
• knee
• mouth
• toe
• eyes

Musical instruments: (she's not so intereted in this topic although she is quite musical)

• drum
• piano

Breeds of dog: (I introduced some dog flashcards 3 days ago)

• Westie
• Shar-pei
• bulldog
• puli
• mixed breed

E. is making up more and more combinations, like big puddle, red pinkie (for polished fingernails), purple plum, pencil drawing, banana yogurt, black doggie etc.

If it goes like this, in two more months she'll say sentences. She's amazing, a little genius. Am I proud? Hard to say how much :)

"Amimals" - in zoos

Going to the zoo was always my favourite activity as a child (still love it today) so I could hardly wait for E. to get at least a little bit interested. And the time has come.

Our first time to the Budapest zoo was when she was 6 months old. It was more fun for me than for her. She had a look at the camels (and smiled when saw them pee) and the farmyard and then fell asleep. She only woke up for nursing (which I managed in the disabled loo) then went back to sleep again.

But now as she is over 1 (15 months old more precisely) she takes pleasure in walking around and looking at animals.

Visiting relatives in Debrecen gave us the sudden idea to visit the zoo there. It was actually a great idea. We all loved it. We were already in the zoo for half an hour (saw some parrots, giraffes and monkeys) when I realised what a good occasion would this be to use English (our Hungarian relatives didn't accompany us). So we just sang our song to signal the change in using languages and continued our animal adventure in English.

As we were walking around, we described everything to her in English (and as usual she was repeating everything like a parrot):

• what animals we saw (turtles, a hippo, penguins  - her favourites, more monkeys, laughing doves, roosters and hens, camels, goats, ostriches and lions)
• what they looked like ("Look, the camel has two big humps"; "Wow, this rooster has a huge red comb on his head")
• what sounds they gave (roar, squeak, cock-a-doodle-do, coo-coo etc.)
• what the animals were served for dinner (fruits, vegetables, mouse, rabbit etc.)



"Pat, pat - rabbit"

At the end of our visit we found a wooden playground where there were a lot of animals. E.'s favourite was the caterpillar. She climbed on it and rode it for about 15 minutes. We also counted and named the caterpillar's legs, eyes, mouth and antennae.


Our second English tour in the zoo was in Budapest with our native nanny, A.
I learnt some new animal names (e.g.:cassowary) and we had a wonderful day with a lot of English (I tried to stay in the background and let A. and E. interact with each other a lot). The photos speak for themselves.

E.'s favourite place was the Butterfly House, where we could see how butterflies come out of their pupa, and of course, there were plenty of different types of butterflies flying around, eating oranges or just resting on the plants. We had to go back once again before leaving the zoo. E. was running around and one could see on her little face how amazed she was. Her favourite animals are butterflies at the moment.



Morpho peleides butterfly - blue on the inside



E.'s pointing at the butterfly she liked the most, saying: "orange"

After the zoo experience I found a nice page where the metamorphosis of a butterfly can be seen quite nicely. So I printed it and E."coloured" it :) with my help.

We also watched the seal show at 11 o'clock. A big crowd gathered to see the seals but everything was explained in Hungarian only. (Sorry A., I didn't interpret it at all :(  )

E. was fascinated by the ball (and not the seal...)

Baby Giraffe

E. was sleeping when we went to see the Neanderthals. It's a relatively new exhibition of a (wax) neanderthal family. This little boy with the cave drawing was my favourite.


After E. woke up we had some lunch (vegetable dish for E. and sandwiches for A. and myself - I wish E. hadn't said "people" for the first time while I put a spoonful of her dish into her mouth)



Flamingoes

 We also went to see the baby elephant, but E. was more interested in a turtle shell:

 

Another favourite place was the traditional Hungarian farmyard. Rabbits were E.'s favourite. We had to return here as well for a second visit. E. was repeating the words like "rabbit", "hop", "carrot" and "apple" all the way through. E. had an incident with the foal, which wanted to her shoes.

 

 

All in all, we enjoyed ourselves to a great extent and will return to practise our English as well as having fun around "amimals" - as E. says.

New flashcards - flags

I have created another pack of flashcards: the European flags. The pack is not full yet, but quite a lot is done. First, I just wanted to check if E. is interested in them or not. As they are very colourful, she loved them at first sight.



I tried to concentrate on countries which are neighbouring countries of Hungary, or I have some information about, or we have already been to etc. I, myself, coloured them AGAIN. (I hope baby Jesus will bring me a colour printer for Christmas). To make the flashcards more durable I laminated them (that was the easier part).

Activities  you can do with flags:

1. just have a look and say the name of the country
2. name the colours on the flag
3. say if the stripes are vertical or horizontal (E. loves long words)
4. tell your child the capital
5. talk about the country if you know it (in our case for instance: Ireland, Mommy lived there for a year a long time ago, the U.K. - this is where A. (our native nanny) comes from, Turkey - this is where Mommy and Daddy were on their honeymoon, Hungary -  we live in Hungary etc.
6. show two flags and ask: which one is ... ? and your child can pick the right one (E. likes this activity not only with cards, but also with soft toys, building blocks, flowers or coloured pencils.... whatever)
7. turn down three cards and let your child turn them up one by one, then say the name of the country (and the capital or the colours - combination of 1.-2.-4.)
8. spread all the cards on the floor and tell your child to choose his or her favourite one (maximum three - E. would give me all the cards :) )
9. pick the flags with the same colours and group them (red-white: Switzerland, Poland and Austria, blue-white-red: the Czech Republic, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Croatia, Slovakia, Slovenia, red-white-green: Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, black-yellow-red: Germany, Belgium)
10. if you make 2 sets you can play a memory game (I had neither time, nor energy to make two sets)

More flags are on the way:

• I want to make England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
• I cannot leave out the USA and Australia as they are among the most important English speaking countries
• Countries of Asia, Africa and South America  are coming too

I wish a day would be about 36-38 hours long...